Chapter 1
S anders Willmott sat in the passenger seat and once again checked his GPS. “I can’t say that our travels have been particularly simple,” he murmured to Riff, who was driving this leg of their trip.
Riff shrugged. “Some of these ops are never easy,” he noted. “We just ensure they’re worthwhile. Ania helped you when you were in captivity, and we got you out of there. So now you will return the favor and will do what you can to help her.”
Sanders shifted to look at him. “I never expected a rescue.”
“Sometimes it happens, even when you least expect it. It’s important to put that out there to the universe and to keep sending those messages. Somebody will find them, hopefully Ania.”
“I know who gets my thanks in this case,” he replied, with a smile.
“Multiple people,” Riff clarified. “I didn’t know you were in need. So, once we found out, we came,” he explained, “and we’ll do the same for Ania.”
“I wish I could let her know we were coming,” he murmured. “I can’t reach her telepathically, which seems odd. She’s in a black hole, and I just get a blank space from her.”
“Maybe because she can’t contact you, or can’t receive your messages?” Riff suggested.
“I would certainly think that’s a legit possibility, but it’s a distressing one. It could mean that somebody has found a way to contain her or to at least stop her from sending messages. Maybe even from receiving anything too. I blame her father. She was so afraid he would sell her to the highest bidder because of her gifts, which she kept hidden. Right before I was rescued, she had injured herself. She didn’t tell me how. Yet thereafter she thought her father was drugging her, telling her it was antibiotics to stop some infection from her injury. Ania thought it was all a ruse to keep her at home.”
“Keeping her drugged would definitely interfere with her gifts. Yet she could speak to you telepathically before?”
“Yes, she was quite good at it. Better than I was. I had to improve in order to speak to her, though maybe it was just a language barrier at that point in time. I don’t know for sure.”
“Lots of times language doesn’t even come into it,” Riff shared, shooting him a sideways glance, as he changed lanes. They were coming up to the main area of town ahead of them. “Now we won’t be at the main city just yet,” he stated. “I wanted to do some reconnaissance ahead of time, from just outside this small village.”
Sanders looked around and nodded. “I don’t know this area, so I’m not necessarily a big help right now.”
“Yet you were in the navy, as I understand?”
“I was, but an injury sidelined me quite a few years ago. Once that happens, it’s easy to lose your skills.”
“Maybe for a time, but it’s not so easy to lose all your instincts,” Riff pointed out. “So just keep that skill honed and think about using the other skills that you have to try and reach her.”
“I have been,” Sanders muttered. “I’ve been sending out signals quite regularly, hoping she can hear me.”
“She probably does hear you, but maybe she can’t reply, which is another issue we’ll have to deal with. If she’s injured, she may not be mobile. So we must consider getting her out in another way, which may require some flexibility in our plans.”
“If she’s injured, it’s all the more reason to get her out.”
“I’m not arguing that,” Riff declared. “Yet, if she’s not ambulatory, it won’t make our job any easier.”
Sanders sucked in his breath at that thought. “You’re right. I don’t even know what I’m thinking,”
“The problem is you’re not really thinking,” Riff said, giving him a knowing smile. “By rights, you should be at home in bed. Do you think I don’t know that you lied about how strong you were?”
He flushed. “Let’s just say that this need, this strong drive to get Ania, has been constantly increasing,” he admitted, “and I couldn’t ignore it, even if I wanted to.”
“Good for you that you’re listening to it, but don’t think for a moment that you fooled any of them.”
Sanders frowned at him. “Sorry?”
“Don’t think you fooled anybody on Terk’s team, especially those healer women. They can see your energy levels in ways that you and I could never even contemplate. So I get that you think you’re helping this rescue, but you’re really not, especially if you don’t come clean about everything you know.”
“I don’t even know anything,” he replied, glancing at Riff. “Honest to God.”
“And telling me the truth is a good thing. Otherwise I wouldn’t be here.”
“Right. So, we’re back to the fact that everybody on Terk’s team has abilities, and God help us if we end up lying. That can’t be good to build trust.”
“True. Since we all do have abilities, we often know if someone is lying or holding back, and that makes us very wary.”
“Of course,” Sanders acknowledged. “I just want to get Ania out of there.”
“Do you have another reason?” Riff asked, with a small smile.
Sanders glanced at him. “What do you mean?”
“I want to ensure you have no revenge agenda or any other ulterior motive rolling around in your head.”
“No. It’s not about that. It’s all about Ania.” He felt Riff’s gaze, like a laser searching his soul.
With a nod, Riff relaxed and replied, “Ah, that explains it then.”
“Explains what?” Sanders asked, flushing.
“The drive inside you to save her. You really care about her.”
He grimaced. “I don’t even know Ania. However, because of that connection to her, I survived.”
“Doesn’t really matter, does it?” Riff noted, with a smirk. “Particularly in our world. Far too few of us are out there to do this energy work, and, when we do find people who are like us, a bond is created, an instant bond, that tends to transfer into an emotional bond—whether we like it or not. Therefore, we have feelings we didn’t really expect to have. Trust me that it’s happened before.”
Sanders sat back and didn’t say a whole lot. “Is that… Is that what happened to you?”
“Sure is,” he snapped. “However, mine didn’t have a happy ending. Still doesn’t, for that matter.”
“Is that what you meant about Angela?”
He nodded. “I was engaged to be married. Angela would have been my sister-in-law, but then… my fiancée was murdered,” he shared, his tone harsh. “Which is also why Terk mentioned trying to help me with that investigation. However, so far, we have no angle or lead to go on. Without that, we’re just spinning our wheels. So, in the meantime, I’m doing something useful to help the rest of his team, while we try to churn up more information. Everyone is working to find a lead, so we can go after whoever murdered my fiancée.”
“And Angela?”
“Angela is a very gifted doctor, an obstetrician—which is a good thing, considering the number of pregnant women in that castle.” Riff gave a chuckle. “It’s scary to see how many enlarged bellies are in that place, but, being who Angela is, she’ll help them all.”
“Yeah, I noticed the bellies,” Sanders quipped. “I just didn’t feel comfortable asking about it and wondered if maybe some baby factory was going on.”
Riff burst out laughing. “I’m sure they would all be less than thrilled with your interpretation on that. Yet it’s a valid observation, when you think about it. An awful lot is going on in the castle that you don’t know about. Seems energy workers who are around other energy workers get a boost in their existing gifts, as well as pick up new ones. Now that Terk’s team has been gathered together for a while, the pregnancies happened, almost all at once—another side effect to the energy workers all gathered together.
“It’s a learning experience now, living at the castle, seeing what else is created there. Yet they’ve come a long way since they started setting up that place—rehabbing it, staffing it, getting supplies, even working on purchasing their own satellite. These guys and gals are good, the best, so, as long as they’re all happy, I’m happy for them.”
“Oh, I’m not unhappy by any means,” Sanders murmured. “However, you’re right. It was a little daunting to see all those pregnant bellies. Particularly as a single guy, as I’ve never really been around pregnant women.”
Riff nodded, commiserating. “Exactly. Which is why I don’t mind helping out, getting out of that castle and their baby-making group mentality.… Yet the fact that Angela is staying very close to me just adds to my pain, bringing up old memories.”
“Right.” Sanders wanted to ask more, but it was obvious that Riff was shutting down that sensitive conversation. It was understandable, and, if the guy’s fiancée had been murdered, it had to be incredibly painful. As they drove up to a small bed-and-breakfast, Sanders nodded. “This looks like a good place to stay.”
“Yeah, that was my thought.”
“Do we have reservations?”
“No, we don’t,” he replied. “I wasn’t really expecting to need any.”
“Why is that?”
“I generally have good luck when I go to these places,” he said, “so I can’t see that this will be any different.”
“Good luck, as in what?”
“As in getting reservations,” he replied, with a knowing smile. “I find that when I need things, they’re just there.”
Sanders pondered that, as he walked into the bed-and-breakfast with Riff and they were given a room, facing the street, and they booked it for the night. As they walked up to their room on the second floor, Sanders asked Riff, “So, like that?”
“Exactly like that,” Riff confirmed, with a complacent smile. “You never really know who or what will work out in life, but, if you expect it to work out, you’ll find that it works out much faster.”
“I’ll have to remember that,” he murmured. “So far, I can’t say I’ve had too much luck along that line myself.” He sat down in the nearest chair, clearly winded and sweating a bit.
“Every day is a new day, and right now you’ve been given a chance at a whole new life,” Riff pointed out. “So the fact that you came back after Ania is admirable, just don’t get your ass kicked in the process. I can’t necessarily save you a second time, plus carry Ania out if needed too.”
“Got it,” Sanders noted. “Yet, as you mentioned, my instincts were still there, whether I realized it or not. I might have been off my game, back when I was recovering from my injury for quite a while,” he added, “but I still remember my military training. And I’m still a newbie when it comes to my energy-working skills, but I’m fumbling through it for now.”
“Good, because I may need to call on all you have to offer.”
“I get that. Believe me that I understand this won’t be an easy job. You already rescued me, and now we’re heading right back into the middle of it.”
“Considering we’re a country away, hopefully we’re not heading right back into the middle of the exact same scenario at least, but I also don’t have any illusions that it’ll be a walk in the park. Can you shed any light on why she’s been brought here? That’s something I don’t understand.”
“She has an aunt, and I know that she had been bugging her father to let her visit, as a way to get out of the hot seat at home.”
“But does she trust the aunt?”
“I did ask her that, and she just mentioned how she didn’t have much choice, when it came to her relatives.”
“That’s not much of an answer, and not the sort that’ll help us in any way,” Riff murmured. “We’ve seen betrayal on family levels like you could never imagine,” he noted, with a headshake. “So, I get that Ania thinks she’s probably totally safe going there, but that doesn’t work out for people like us. I, for one, wouldn’t count on it.”
“Which is distressing in itself, but I can’t do anything for her, unless we can get to her.”
“What gifts do you have?”
He hesitated. “Terk could tell you more than I can. And I definitely am looking forward to Terk teaching me all that I can learn about being an energy worker. Yet, right now, all I can do is telepathically communicate with Ania, obviously, and I did find I could amplify her energy.”
Riff slowly turned, as he dropped his bag onto one of the two single beds. “What do you mean?”
“When Ania needed more energy, I could give it to her, but only if I knew where she was going. So I guess I send energy to places, not so much people, or something like that. I haven’t really had a chance to put it to the test, except for sharing my energy with Ania. The Russians were testing me, for communications, sending messages more than anything.”
“Your captors?”
“Yeah, I tried hard not to let them know about anything I could do, but I had to let them know something. So, it was more of a give and take. If I withheld too much, I risked not getting fed and literally not getting enough nutrients to even survive to see another day. I took several beatings because of it,” he shared, his tone turning harsh. “So, it became a matter of trying to funnel as little information as I could, a little bit at a time.”
“Right,” Riff murmured. “It’s always a problem when you’ve got these assholes who think they have a right to our brains, just because their own intellect is too tiny and insignificant to do what we do.”
Sanders burst out laughing. “That’s one way to look at it, but I’m not sure anybody out there would particularly like your take on it.”
Riff grinned. “Probably not, but that doesn’t make it any less true. I want to go for a walk around town. Are you up for it?”
“I’m up for it,” Sanders declared, standing up but wobbling.
Riff frowned. “Might be better if you stayed here and rested. I need you to bring your A-game, and you need to rest.”
He glared at him. “That may be true, but, if Ania’s out there, yet weaker somehow, I might pick up any signals that she’s sending while we walk around.”
“I can pick up energy too,” Riff noted calmly.
“I’m not exactly sure what you do,” he admitted. “I mean, obviously you got me out of that hellhole. I just don’t quite understand how.”
“I’m a shadow,” Riff stated, with a smirk. “Don’t let it get to you. When it’s time for you to figure it out, you’ll get it. In the meantime, it’s better if you don’t know too much.”
“You think I’ll get recaptured?”
“I’m always thinking of that possibility,” he agreed, with a nod. “Particularly if anybody here recognizes you from over there. If Ania happens to have any guards or jailers from Russia, or from her father’s team of guards,” Riff pointed out, “then you’ll have to watch your ass. Because again, saving one person is possible, saving two is quite unlikely, especially if both of you are immobile. So, ensure you don’t become a victim because I might have to leave you behind.”
Sanders stared after Riff, but nodded, because he was right.
*
Ania slipped down the hallway of her aunt’s home, hearing raised voices at the front door, just inside the outdoor porch. However, with the front door closed, it was hard for Ania to hear the words. She was hoping if she made it up to her room, the discussion would be clearer. Nothing was good about her father’s tone of voice, and the fact that he was here wasn’t helping. She heard her aunt pleading with her father over something, but Ania didn’t know what they were talking about and didn’t like anything about it, especially when he slapped her aunt, who cried out in response.
Grabbing her sweater and her purse, Ania glanced at her still unpacked bag and realized it would be too big and too bulky to sneak out of here with. Her father’s presence here was surely to force her home, and he wouldn’t take no for an answer. So, if he wanted to talk to Ania, he would be all over her aunt. This was her mother’s sister, which just added to the potential for control and conflict. Her father thought women were beneath him, were chattel, were property. It had become so obvious since her mother’s passing.
Ania raced from her bedroom to the master bedroom, where a small deck extended to the back of the property. She slipped onto the deck, taking the stairs to the backyard and racing to the tree line, hiding in the darkness—not that it was fully dark yet, but still, it gave her a little bit of a cover.
From here she stopped and thought about her options. She instantly felt guilt, leaving her aunt to her father’s anger. Ania had heard the slaps her father had given to her mother, trying to hide them from Ania. The last thing Ania wanted was for her father to hassle her aunt for letting Ania visit. Her aunt wasn’t strong herself, and her father was like a steam engine. He would run over everybody to get what he wanted. The fact was, if he wanted Ania, then nobody would stop him. No one would put themselves in his way. If someone did, they would die.
That thought made Ania gasp. Did her mother try to stop her father from selling Ania and her gifts to the Russian government? Did her mother die trying to protect Ania? Just the idea alone brought Ania to tears. She feared that was exactly how her mother had died.
The only way Ania had of stopping her father was getting away and finding some other avenue to leave the country. She had money in the bank, but she had to access it. She had credit cards, but she didn’t dare use them, not while she was still in town. No point in looking for money in her aunt’s house because her aunt didn’t have much.
Slipping out the back through the neighbor’s yard, Ania quickly picked up the pace and headed toward town and the bank, trying to stay undercover. She was careful, in case any of her father’s cronies had come with him. Some of them probably had, since he rarely went anywhere alone anymore. It seemed like somebody was always attached to her father’s hip.
He had a couple goons she could always count on being there beside him. If she could avoid those guys, chances were, she might make it out of this mess. The fact that he’d come, even though she had told him that she would be at her aunt’s house, revealed a lot about his state of mind, and potentially how worried he was that she wouldn’t follow through on her word. But, hey, that’s the way her world was right now, and it sucked big time. Everything had blown up after her mother’s death. Her father had become much darker, much more pro-government, more political, and had certainly looked at Ania sideways a lot in recent times, and that bothered her more than she cared to admit.
She couldn’t explain so many things to him because he would not be open to it, and, even if he were, it was only because he could see how it would benefit him financially. Being female, Ania didn’t have a whole lot of value in her father’s eyes. If he’d had sons instead, now that would have been a different story. She knew that. Right or wrong, it was their culture. She’d heard the argument time and time again. Her mother had tried to protect Ania, and her father had been incensed when no sons had come along, no other children, in fact. Ania’s father had more or less washed his hands of Ania and her mother, and just kept them along because they were his property.
Yet Ania had seen a lot of fairly similar marriages in her community, so she could hardly just blame her father. Regardless, she had no plans to ever join those ranks. Why would she? There had to be something in this for women, but that was missing from her mother’s marriage. Once her mother had realized that Ania had talents, gifts, the one thing she had always warned Ania of was to never let her father know. But, once her mother had died, her father suddenly seemed to think he knew something of value. Whether her mother had kept a diary or had left a note for him to find after her death, Ania didn’t know—or maybe her mother’s note had been for Ania.
Her father wouldn’t have shared the source anyway, and that just left Ania in the dark, trying to figure out what was happening in her life, how to deal with the loss of her mother.
Ania had journaled her feelings after her mother’s death. At first it was just some word salad of all the emotions she felt. Then she had progressed into writing somewhat coherent streams of consciousness. When her father confiscated her journal, stating he had burned it, she knew her mother’s notes or journals had surely suffered the same fate. No matter, Ania then took to social media, starting an online support group for those who were grieving the death of a loved one. She had been surprised to find its numbers growing.
In short order, it morphed into being more women-centric, focused on their gaining more power in the world, more rights, equitable treatment, all of which Ania could relate to as well. Plus the medical world had joined in, to discuss death and depression and related topics.
Ania’s involvement in the social media element had grown out of her frustration to keep things from her father—he and his thugs were surely not reading posts on the internet—so she felt safe there. And thus a community for her and others was borne.
Thankfully another community for Ania, her schooling, had been completed before her mother’s death could interrupt that. Ania had been going to university, working on getting a good education. She had completed her accounting degree, but her father had refused to let her move to the big city to get a job. That was another reason why Ania wanted to talk to her aunt, trying to get away and to get a job someplace where she could be free to utilize her skills. Her aunt, in the short evening that Ania had spent with her last night, had been enthusiastic—right up until Ania had mentioned that she didn’t want her father to know anything about these plans. At that point her aunt had become fearful, and that should have been Ania’s first warning.
Knowing that her aunt was afraid, Ania should have just gotten up last night and walked away and kept her aunt out of it. Because now? Now with her father here, it was too late—definitely for Ania, and possibly for her aunt. Ania kept moving, heading to the ATM at the bank. When she finally got near there, she noted a large black government rig driving down the street on the same side where she walked. She darted into a grocery store and stood at the window, watching. The vehicle went past, and she quickly exited and headed to the bank, slipping into the covered unlocked lobby with the ATMs. She was outside again within seconds. She had money now, though not enough to buy a plane ticket or a boat ride. Even if she did, where was she supposed to go?
She had her passport though, so that was a help. This was the money her mother had set aside secretly for Ania. So hopefully her father didn’t know about this account at all. Once he did, he would be livid, trying to get the money back. Ania sighed, just another reason her father may have killed her mother.
Even though this wasn’t a whole lot of cash, the secrecy behind this account gave Ania a chance at a new life and would have made her father so very angry. She’d been looking for work for many months in Russia, but every time she came up with something, her father kiboshed it. His last blowup had been when he flat-out told her to stop thinking about getting a job because he wouldn’t let her go. At the time, he’d used the excuse that he only had one child, one family member left, and he didn’t want her to move away. To Ania, it had come across as totally false, and she knew he was lying.
That bothered her even now because she had seen his sideways looks, checking to see if she’d fallen for his lies. She hadn’t; she wasn’t that foolish. Not now anyway, and hopefully not ever. She had come to acknowledge the worst about her father. If he caught her, she would do what she had to do in order to get the hell away again, though the truth remained that he would make damn sure it was difficult to leave, if not impossible.
She watched the big black car slowly pull out of a parking lot and head toward her again.
She realized that, no matter what she did, this wouldn’t end well. She had to get the hell away, and she had to get away now, before her father realized what her plans were. It occurred to her that he’d only let her come here in the first place because he had his goons watching her. He probably figured that he would catch her unaware and then move her as he wanted, without anybody daring to stop him.
Ania shook her head. She had essentially been a prisoner for most of the last five years. While she had permission to attend the university, her father’s goons were seen all around her. She had strict instructions to come straight home from her classes. Of course her father would not call her a prisoner. However, her mother had made it very clear how this would be Ania’s life if she didn’t get out, though her mother wasn’t capable of helping Ania much. She would have to solve that problem herself or accept the reality of what her future would be.
When her mother had suddenly passed on, Ania had been so broken and so devastated to lose her mother that she hadn’t even cared about her own plight. She just hadn’t realized how serious her mother had been about these warnings.
But then in the ensuing months, it had been insidious but steady, as she watched her father very quickly remove whatever influence of her mother’s that he could, slowly bringing Ania further and further into his world. When she balked, his backhand had been his instant reply. She’d been shocked and stunned that he would hit her, particularly since she was an adult woman. Then Ania finally realized how likely her father had continually abused her own mother. He was possibly now doing just that with her aunt.
Hating that she’d taken the chance and had come here and had put her aunt in trouble, Ania quickly headed toward a park, hopefully where the government vehicle couldn’t find her. Slipping behind a couple big trees in the back, she pulled out her phone and called her aunt.
When her aunt answered, her voice was breathless, as she greeted her with a warning. “You need to run.… You have to run.”
“Is he still there?” she asked.
“No, no. He’s gone out looking for you. You were seen downtown, and now he’s after you.”
“Did he say what he wanted?”
“ He’s taking you home, where you belong .” Her aunt hesitated. “He made it sound like you weren’t right in your mind, like you were a danger.”
“What?” Ania cried out. “Why would he do that?” But, in her heart, she knew that he would do it to control her even more. “He’s wrong,” Ania declared, beginning to feel hysterical. “You’ve got to understand that.”
“I don’t know what to believe,” her aunt admitted. “You arrived out of the blue, looking for a way to get away from your father and to have a life. However, according to him, that’s not what you wanted to do at all. He insisted that some medication backfired, and now you’re a danger to yourself and others.”
“I see,” she stated, her tone turning formal. “He’s wrong, but I can tell that there is no point in talking to you.”
“Wait,” her aunt called out, as Ania went to end the call. “I don’t know what the truth is, but you’re still my niece, and, if you need help, I’ll try and help you. However, I don’t have any control over him.”
“No, nobody does,” Ania agreed. “That’s the problem. Nobody ever wins a fight with him. It’s all right for him to beat us up and to treat us like we’re nothing but commodities.” Her aunt gasped. “Yeah, he hit you too tonight, didn’t he?” she asked. “I’m afraid he totally abused my mother. I’m even more afraid that he killed her. So I’m very sorry. I never should have come here and dragged you in it.” With that she hung up, without letting her aunt say anything more.
Ania had considered this earlier, but now she realized that all the medications the doctors had been prescribing for her for the last while, that she’d finally ditched on a whim, were probably drugs meant to help control her and to make her compliant for her father. She’d wondered and had played with the idea for a while. She realized that her mental clarity—which had improved so much over the last few days—appeared to be the result of her withdrawal from the drugs and wasn’t merely a boost from the sense of purpose she felt, while planning her life. The truth was that she was off that medication, and she was thinking for herself again.
She understood why her controlling father would contemplate drugging her, but she sure as hell had no intention of ever falling back under his thumb again. Yes, she’d been devastated for a time. The loss of her mother had been such a shock to Ania, but she hadn’t been suicidal, and she hadn’t been a danger to herself or anybody else, and there’d been absolutely no need to drug her. That obviously wasn’t her father’s position, and now she had to ensure that he never got his hands on her. Yet who could help her?
Who was out there and was capable of helping, when her father was so powerful and had so much pull in the Russian government? That was the scary part. He could say jump, and there would always be people who would just jump solely because he had ordered it. While Ania couldn’t imagine any of his goons finding joy in the work they did, her father took great pleasure in having that power, in wielding that power. He’d become a whole lot more drunk on that power over the last few months, so much more arrogant, so much more aggressive.
She didn’t know whether he was taking any medications or should be taking some. Regardless, if he was on something, there had definitely been a huge shift in his attitude. She hoped he wasn’t doing drugs because it would likely make him even more dangerous. Right now she’d already had about all she could handle from him. She again wished Sanders was around, even if just for the comfort she got when telepathically connected to him. She once again sent out a message to him, hoping that stopping her meds would allow her to send these messages.
Ania shook her head. Her father had told her that those medications were antibiotics, after she’d hurt herself. Now she realized—as some messages were starting to filter through her brain, albeit weak and fuzzy—they weren’t antibiotics at all but something much more. Something intended to help her father control her, which was very much more his style. It was sad that a father felt that he had to stoop so low in order to get his daughter to do what he wanted, but it was also very sad that he would want such a restricted life for her.
She didn’t know what to do at the moment. She sat here in the park for the longest time, until she eventually realized that she would attract attention soon if she didn’t get up and go do something. If she didn’t find a way to get a move on, she may have no way out of this. With that thought, she quickly stood up and walked to the end of the park, still wondering what her options were. Just as she was about to step onto the sidewalk, she saw that same damn vehicle slowly driving toward her.
She stepped back into the shadows. Several other people watched the vehicle, some with fear, some with curiosity, some with just a wary eye, wondering who this person was in a fancy government vehicle and why they were still in town, wandering up and down their streets. She watched as once again the car went past. As soon as it was out of sight, she stepped out of the shadows and walked quickly to the bus depot.